


caught in slow motion

by duckmoles



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Gen, Just a hint of Fluff, M/M, Mostly Canon Compliant, Multi, Non-Linear Narrative, POV Second Person, Pre-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Tony Stark vs himself, written before Infinity War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-23
Updated: 2018-04-23
Packaged: 2019-04-27 00:17:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14413554
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duckmoles/pseuds/duckmoles
Summary: You are Tony Stark. You're still trying to figure out what that means.





	caught in slow motion

**Author's Note:**

> some notes on the timeline:  
> tony's birthday is set to 1970, steve's to 1918, and the rest of the movies are set at the year they came out, mostly.
> 
> this will probably be consistent to whatever infinity war will be, considering the fact that i was vague about it.

It is 1942. You will not be born for decades. Several months ago, bombs rained down on Hawaii, thousands of miles away. A festering infection of death spreads across Europe.

There is a man, fighting in a back alley. His heart pounds against his ribs. He can barely breathe, and his fists hold the fury of a thousand soldiers.

*

You are a man. Some will accuse you of being otherwise, but you are a man.

It is 2018, and the sky above you burns red.

*

It is 1942. A man steps into a machine. He comes out more than a man, chest heaving with newfound breath, ready to save the world. He will save the world – once, twice, thrice, more – but in a few moments, he will fail to save a man.

He does not know this. He feels shaky and has to look down to meet someone’s eye for the first time in his life. 

Your father stands above him, pleased. He will save the world too, though in ways both more apparent and more subtle. You won’t think so. You’ll be 21, and you’ll be dying, and your father will leave both you and an empire that you won’t know what to do with. You’ll be 40, and you’ll be dying, and your father will save your life.

*

The California coastline looks small from where you are. It stretches out for miles in all directions, rocky in some areas, sand dotting the rest, occasionally interrupted by piers and boardwalks jutting out into the water.

It’s not like you haven’t flown before, but the soft hum of the repulsors seem to resonate throughout your entire body until it feels like you’re ready to vibrate out of your skin. When the potential energy builds – release. You streak into the clouds, JARVIS’s soft tones reading out calculations in your ear.

*

70 years in the past, a thousand miles away, a man that’s not quite a man plummets into the frigid Arctic ice. In his last moments, he thinks about snow-dusted mountains and a dance he’ll never get to have. He dies –

*

You are born in spring, when the air is ripe with pollen and the scent of flowers. The hospital smells of disease and disinfectant.

Your father can’t bear to look at you, and your mother can’t bear to hold you.

You wail as you enter the world, breathless, lungs straining at the indignity.

Your father is tired already; he leaves the room.

*

– And wakes.  The world did not cease to spin when Steve Rogers went into the ice. It is a new world, and it is an old world. He will know it soon enough.

You are 40, and close enough to death you can feel it, ash and wax burning in the back of your throat, flames licking at your heels. Soon enough.

*

You’re 3, and you haven’t spoken a word. Your mother is worried, and your father is as well, though he hides it with hours spent in his workshop.

Jarvis is tired, chasing after a precocious toddler determined to get his hands into the most dangerous devices imaginable. He stays with you at night. When he strokes your hair, asks, “Tony, what’s going on in that brilliant head of yours, hmm? I won’t know until you tell me,” you tug at his sleeve and point to a storybook.

*

A boy streaks across the New York skyline. He’s impossibly young, so young that it hurts. You don’t care for him. You can’t. The battle’s already been lost, and here he is, trying to convince you that you won.

You are 46, and when you close your eyes, you can see yourself, 16 and snorting coke off a toilet lid in a dingy bathroom. You are 46, and you don’t think you’ll ever be able to expel the cold from your bones.

*

“I’ve seen colder,” you say. You do, you do. A blink of the eye, a wrinkle in time, and you’re in Siberia, and your – Steve smashes a shield down onto your heart. No, not yet. Back, back, and you’re in space, watching a civilization die. You shake your head, and it’s Christmas, JARVIS is gone, your house is gone, and snowflakes gather steadily in your hair.

*

You wake up. Your mouth tastes like death. You feel worse.

A man – tall, well-dressed – sits beside your bed.

You are 16, and the man hands you a glass of water and introduces himself as James Rhodes. The name sticks on your tongue. You smile and call him Rhodey.

*

You wear your shirt around your head, the desert sun unrelenting, the shifting patterns of sand unassailable. The ground burns your feet.

You can’t die here. You have to go home and –

*

 _Alien apocalypse_ , is what you think when the Chitauri pour out of the sky. Alien apocalypse, and you’re wearing a glorified tin can.

The Captain calls out plays, and you and your team (Team? You’re not quite a team yet, and you won’t be for some time.) defeat a Norse god and his alien horde. You fall. You live.

You get shawarma, after.

*

It is 2008. You’re in a cave. Your heart pounds against your ribs, powered by a battery. Yinsen is terrifyingly calm as you tell him about your plan. It’s impossible, you think, even to yourself.

Three months later, you fly from the mountains on a suit made from missiles. Yinsen is dead.

*

It is 1944. A man falls from a train.

*

Steve Rogers shows up on your doorstep. _I need to find him_ , he says.

You, who has made a fortune off leaving the past behind, look into his eyes and agree.

*

You are a murderer. You always have been. You burst from the womb with blood on your hands, and you think you will leave the same way.

Steve Rogers puts the pen down and chooses. There is a man whose record is spotless, clean as the driven snow. He chooses, and he kills you.

You are 46.

*

It is Christmas, and you are alone. You can’t bear to stay in the dusty mansion, with all its echoes and shadows, so you go to one of the parties you’ve been invited to. You don’t remember any of it.

It is 1991, you are 21, and your parents are dead. They will refuse to stay dead. James Buchanan Barnes will emerge as a ghost, and so will Howard and Maria Stark.

*

You meet while fighting a god. He reminds you of your father, self-righteous and angry; you don’t like him.

Two years into the future, you kiss him, and it feels like fire. You fuck him, and it burns.

He tells you you’re selfish, a coward. You agree and tell him the same thing.

You hate him.

*

Pepper Potts is your soulmate. She lowers her hand into your chest and saves your life. She runs your company. She saves your life.

As fire courses through her veins, she wakes up screaming. You understand why she leaves.

*

You smile when you see him, and the strange feeling in your heart must be a lingering side effect from the arc reactor. It must be.

You are 44, and Steve Rogers makes you coffee in the mornings, just the way you like it. You kiss him. He kisses back.

*

It is 1975. You are 5, and your mother thinks you should start school in the fall. You would rather not. Your time would be wasted; after all, who could teach you better than yourself? You built a circuit board (Jarvis helped you weld it together) with nothing but the parts from your father’s scrap pile and your toy car. It’ll be good for him, your mother argues.

When you are 14, you’ll pack your bags and leave for MIT. You won’t be shaving yet. You will be drinking.

*

You wonder when your past will stop haunting you.

*

It is 1965. Howard Stark flirts with a young Italian woman. In a year’s time, they will marry. In 26 years’ time, they will be dead.

*

It is 1918. The Fourth of July. Fireworks explode over the Hudson. To the east, bombs explode over northern France. 3,000 die.

Steve Rogers is a quiet child, and they worry he will not live through the night. In the morning, he wakes up the whole ward with his wailing, and the nurses murmur to themselves, _there’s a fighter_. Good. He is born chasing war, and he will spend the rest of his life stopping it.

*

You never do break up, do you, but you think trying to kill his best friend works rather nicely. So does a shield to the chest. So does a letter and a cell phone you don’t plan on ever using.

*

Jarvis died two months ago. You’ve been working nonstop in the time since. It’s going to be – it’s going to be something big, you know it.

You almost miss your graduation, but Rhodey wakes you up in the early morning with coffee, a bagel, and some ibuprofen. He drags you to the shower, forces you to get dressed, and only a few hours later you accept your diploma. There is polite clapping when you’re introduced. Your head pounds at your skull, a giant demanding to be noticed, but you just close your eyes, briefly, and return to your seat.

After, you get no flowers, but Rhodey and his family drag you out for celebratory dinner.

*

You thought you could trust Obie. But there’s a searing pain working up your jaw, the screeching of the paralytic device echoing in your ears, and you can’t do anything but watch as Obadiah tears down everything you’ve done in the last 20 years. You had thought –

You had thought you were doing good.

*

You build Ultron because you have to. There is no other option. Your mind races with the idea – peace, for once in your life. You have always tried to create peace, even while building bombs in your basement.

When you close your eyes, you can see the endless black of the universe, stretching out to infinity. It is not empty, and it is not peaceful.

You are 45. The world will end in 3 years.

*

It is 1941. War arrives, Christmas on its heels.

*

It is 1991. You are tired. The new year approaches.

*

It is 2016. You watch your parents die.

*

It is 1970. Jarvis picks you up and croons softly into your ear.

*

It is 1945. Steve Rogers saves the world.

*

It is 2012. You save the world, and you see the end of it.

*

The sky above you burns red. Your armor has cracked apart, broken into pieces like a geode, except there’s no gem inside. You think you’re crying.

All you ever wanted to do was help. It hurts, more than you ever thought it would. You had hoped – prayed, even if you haven’t gone to church for decades – that it would be painless. That the aliens would descend, and it would be over. You should know by now that you get nothing without pain.

You are 48. The world is ending.

*

You rise up on your toes, catching Steve’s mouth with yours. After all this is over, you’re going to take him back to your room and have a very long, very slow make out session. You’re going to collapse into your bed, tugging off his shirt as you do. It’s going to be gentle, and afterwards, you’ll lay curled next him, feeling the heat from his body seep into yours. He’ll complain about your feet being cold, after which you’ll hook them under his calves and laugh as he squirms. There are still a thousand and one things to take care of, but all of those can wait. This is more important.

“I can’t wait to get out of here,” you murmur into the curve of Steve’s jaw.

Steve smiles delicately, weaving the fingers of his right hand between yours. “I love you too,” he says, slightly sardonic but still warm with affection. He leans down to kiss you again. 

How did you get so lucky?

**Author's Note:**

> <3 hope you liked it!! (if you did, pls leave a comment/kudos!)
> 
> post-infinity war edit: uh. yikes.


End file.
